Fear is the Beholder
by InzanityFirez
Summary: Sam wonders what Dean's fear would have been, and Dean knows there's only one thing he'll ever really be afraid of: losing his little brother.  BrotherlyFluff! Tag to 7x14.


**This is kind of a cheater-fic. By which I mean that I wrote it up in another story, [These Brothers Again-although this version is slightly edited] but I had intended it to be able to be a stand-alone too because I wanted it anyway. [And I wanna post something…but I digress!] XD The Plucky Pennywhistle episode bugged me because the Wikipedia summary mentioned that Dean had to deal with his worst childhood fear: losing his brother [or something to that effect], but other than Sam being in danger they didn't really touch on it as a theme in the episode. So I wanted to add a tag [or coda, is it?] dipping into Dean's fear a bit. The quotes are by memory since I'm using a crash-happy computer and couldn't do a quote hunt. XD so…bear with them if they're not verbatim. And enjoy my abuse of brotherly fluff-ish. XD~**

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"You're a jerk."

"You're breaking my heart, bitch."

"I'm not kidding, Dean. If I find another one of those stupid dolls somewhere…"

"What's wrong, Glitterbelle? One little doll too much for you to handle?"

Sam clenched his teeth a bit before he very deliberately shook off some of the remaining glitter onto Dean. They hadn't reached a motel yet, so he was still covered in the craptastic glitter explosion courtesy of his clown-nightmare fight. A situation his brother had yet to let him live down, and had taken advantage of by picking up-so far-four of those stupid clown dolls. He suspected the fourth was the last, but he was on guard just in case he had to chuck another one out the window. Possibly to be accompanied by Dean's prized new slinky the next time.

Dean huffed. "Keep your fairy dust to yourself, clown boy."

"Cute, Dean. Real cute." So much for apologizing for all the trauma he'd given Sam.

Dean smirked in reply and Sam rolled his eyes before he regarded his brother with a mixture of teasing and curiosity. "What about you? If he'd worked his mojo on you, would I be walking you through landing a plane?"

"Like you know how to land a plane." Dean shifted uncomfortably though at the mention of an airplane, and Sam gained a smirk of his own.

"Seriously though, that would have been it, right?" His brother's big fear, or childhood fear, at any rate. One that, as with Sam's, had extended into his future. "Planes are your big bad fear?" he taunted, and Dean's gaze zeroed in on the road ahead of him half-mindedly.

"_Sam!" A flash of a knife and Sam was down, and Dean was holding his dying brother in his arms. He couldn't die, not Sammy, not now. Not after everything. _

"_You walk out that door," a bloodied Dean regarded the demon-blood pumped Sam, "Don't you come back!" Sam turned and left. _

_John Winchester shouted as Sam headed for that door. "You walk out that door, you don't come back, y'hear me?" _

"_Sam, he doesn't mean that. Sammy! Damnit!" Dean watched as Sam walked out despite his best efforts. He was going to Stanford, he was leaving them._

_Sam shouldered his backpack and left the car, and Dean drove off without him, even though everything in him was screaming to go back: to get his brother back ._

"_Sam! Sam!" Dean couldn't let him kill Lilith… _

"_Stop him or we will.." He couldn't let the angels take him._

"_This is the stupidest thing you've ever done." Sam hissed as Dean chose to stay despite the Croatoan virus. _

"_I'm here, Sammy." Dean smiled weakly, bloodied as the Lucifer-possessed Sam pulverized him. And he remained knelt on the ground as he stared at the space where a hole had opened up, where Sam had jumped through and gone. Where he'd let his baby brother sacrifice himself. _

_Dean sat beside Sam's lifeless body and recounted memories with him, the brother he'd promised to watch out for, to take care of…_

_His biggest fear was losing his little brother._

Dean smiled thinly as he glanced at his smirking little brother in the passenger seat. "Dude. Planes kill. It's a no-brainer."

Sam scoffed. "Yeah, and how many times have we established that clowns do too?"

"_Just don't die…" Sam pleaded in the driver's seat and Dean felt his heart bleed despite himself. _

"More people die from planes than clowns. You just got some crap-luck, pal." Dean grinned at Sam belligerently and Sam rolled his eyes again in response.

"Yeah, well, since you're stuck with me: it's your crap-luck too."

"_Sam! Sammy!" He couldn't lose him, he couldn't lose his little brother, he couldn't lose Sammy…there was nothing more important to him, no one more important than Sam…no matter how big he got: he was Dean's little brother…his Sammy.._

"_If you're gonna do it, do it right, with a smile." Frank said firmly._

Dean kept up his grin as he ruffled Sam's hair playfully, it had been awhile since he'd used the gesture, but what the Hell. "I can live with that."

Sam's playful expression flickered something like relief and surprise a moment as he shoved his brother lightly with one hand and smoothed out his hair. "Damn straight." he quoted his brother.

Dean chuckled and kept up his smile until he turned his head slightly and let his gaze fall momentarily out the window. Sam didn't want him to die, and he refused to lose Sam. But really, how else was any of this going to end? How else _could_ it end?

"_Why are you doing this? If it was me, I'd let you rot down here. Hell, I have let you rot here." Dean was dubious as he regarded his little brother in Bobby's panic room._

"_You're still my big brother." Sam explained as Dean questioned his faith in him, with absolute conviction._

Dean was smiling by the time he turned to look back at Sam, and there was no hint of his thoughts in his expression. It wasn't Sam's job to carry them: it was Dean's. Always had been, always would be. Because more than anything, losing his brother…that scared the Hell out of him. Dean would take care of the kid the way he always had, and if that meant sucking it up, then so be it. If that meant giving the whole damned world a big _screw you_, Fate, Heaven, Hell, the Apocalypse, Destiny itself: it didn't matter. Sammy was his to watch out for, and now he really was all Dean had left: his hope, his family, his partner, his best friend, _his brother_. So for him, he'd do anything, even the little things.

"_Fake it till you break it." _

Damn straight.

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**Yeah, yeah, cheap fluff. But hopefully it was GOOD cheap fluff. Or something. XD Enjoy! ~Witchy. [Oh, and by the by, if their idea is to bring Castiel back without his memories…I'M GONNA BE PISSED. I -hate- that old song and dance. I just wanna see DeanxCasxSammyxBobby together again ;-; ] P.P.S...MY FIFTIETH STORY! Bwah! XD~**


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